Its not original and not a big eco benefit I agree but its better than Sicilians actually. Sicilian get 325 food after horse collar but this is 350 food even without horse collar. After heavy plow, this bonus will give Dravidian farms 550 food and Sicilian farms after Heavy plow get 575 food. So for upto 1 hr 20 mins of game time, this bonus is better.
On land its good but you still probably have to do farm upgrades. Heavy plow increases farm work rate as well. On water and hybrid its good to remove gimmicky useless fishermen carry capacity but fishing ship carry capacity is quite good. After the first few mins, the fishing ships move quite a lot and +15 carry capacity adds a lot of benefit. So this might even end up being a nerf on maps like four lakes or scandinavia with a lot of fish and a buff on maps like Frigid lake or Golden swamp with not much fish.
I think he implied a nerf in return because proposing +25 hp for a unit below average in Castle Age and OP in late Imperial from nowhere is clearly bad idea. Historically these naked, shielded infantry in India really exist, Afanasy Nikitin mentioned these Indian infantry in his book named A Journey Beyond the Three Seas. In the book he specially mentioned them as fast walking troops and they were send forth before more elite cavalry deployed. Current Urumi does same job as Dravidians Champion but it is 10 times better Champion. I would actually increase Urumiâs speed to 1.30 in return I would remove splash damage of charge attack. I read that book from translation to my mother tongue.
It is outright OP as well. It is stronger than Siciliansâ farm bonus in early game. Dravidians is already strong civ until Castle Age in Arabia. Getting 175f bonus without nerf make Dravidians OP until late Castle Age until when Dravidians would beat majority of civs 70%.
It is absurdly OP. On the other hand, I liked the idea. I would apply as âMilitia-line gain +5 hp after every upgradesâ and remove Champion for tech-tree, in result Dravidians will get 50 hp Man-at-arms, 70 hp Longsword and 75 hp Two-handed Swordman.
The HP buff is an open question I had. If the unique tech makes Urumi feasible, the HP buff is not needed. If Opponent plays all-in castle, Dravidians need a power spike.
The bonus is a C-tier bonus at best. This is not even a food bonus. It is a wood bonus. The farm bonus I suggested is an indirect buff to castle age play where Dravidians are very weak not feudal age. Let us assume I had 2 weak villagers who lured boar farming near my TCs. With the bonus, farms will last 2x10 mins. This is 120 wood you will save by not reseeding in feudal age. Instead of giving another +200 wood like a lot of proposals in the thread, this is not an OP bonus. This is not even enough to build a range or stable. Utmost, either a fire galley or a couple of fishing ships can be made when playing water which maintains their water meta. The 6-8 more vills I put on farms will not save me wood till mid castle age. So the concern that early castle age play being 70% better then other civs is unwarranted. If I need more efiicient farms, I might need Heavy plow before I re-seed my second set of farms. The bonus has trade-offs. The reason this bonus could work better is because, its scalable and flexible compared to one-time bonuses.
The idea was to give Dravidians a wood bonus that scales and gives the villagers gameplay some flexibility. In castle age, the bonus saves 120 wood. If Horse collar was skipped, player can construct a dock closer to fish location without gathering extra resource. With extra wood, if a TC is constructed, original TC can do wheel borrow to increase Villager efficiency before opponent pushes. So by using the bonus flexibly we can overcome the nerf from fishing boat carry capacity. Heavy plow can always be researched later in the game when multiple TCs are up.
Halbs donât come out âignoring armourâ from the get go. These techs are locked behinds castles and take a ton of resources to research. In castle age, you need a castle â Research âStrike corpsâ â research âImpâ â Research âWootsâ. At this point of time, Dravidian tech like âWoot steelâ donât work like a come back tech despite being locked behind an imperial age castle. It takes a long time to get to woots. Despite being faster to imp and playing a better game, Iâve lost to late game Hussar raiding. Iâve watched even Hera lose as Dravidians to Yo despite being in the lead throughout the game due to hussar raid at end. Hera remarked âThats it. Lets say well played GG. I donât want to say it because he didnât play well. But we canât counter his raidsâ. Currently Dravidians donât have a solution to this problem. Faster Halbs can be a very good raiding unit in late game. Donât look at only halb. Look at the scenario. Dravidians donât get knights or any cavalry upgrades. That power deficiency has to be made up by spreading offensive and defensive upgrades to other units. This is not an OP unit in the overall win-condition scenario. Dravidians need a trash unit to finish their games and faster Halbs could fill that role well.
Do you really think this bonus is C-tier bonus. Franks have weaker one in Feudal Age, only 75f on farms, 15% faster berries (extra 80f-90f which is nothing comparing to Dravidians 200w per age) and 20% hp Scouts and Franks early game is one of the strongest in the game. Your bonus starts in Dark Age and provides additional 60 x 10 = 600w until late Feudal Age. 800w in early game is cleary OP with additional 25% faster attacking Skirmisher. Mongols will envy Dravidians scout rush, it will be new meta in the game and knocked down every civ before minute 20.
The bonus is nothing more than teutons 40% cheaper farms coming in later in the game when reseeding starts. Where would you rank teuton bonus? A-Tier, B-Tier, ###### ###### Doesnât matter. Just put Dravidian bonus a step below that or above that. Teutons are not exactly top 5 in any map. For Dravidians, It is not an immediate discount which will push the civ to become a top 5 rush civ.
Teutons have heavily armoured Knights despite being an infantry civ. Dravidians donât have that luxury. The civ design should have included a far better civ bonus. The fact that Dravidians donât get Knights makes the civ rely heavily on archers and without a recurring wood bonus even that play is impossible in castle age and later. 200 wood is useful only for feudal rush and nothing else. If needed, devs could change that bonus to 200 extra wood at the start of the game.
Teutons bonus is S tier and it is only bonus of Teutons until Castle Age. Dravidians has already Teutons level eco bonus until Castle Age, make this twice will break the game. You canât make eco bonuses twice stronger, Your idea is like âI will add Bengalis 2 villager per age bonus to Japanese because Bengalis isnât OP with extra villagers.â or I will add all Dradivians bonuses (200w, 25% Skirmisher and 50% cheaper Barracks techs) to Ethiopians because Ethiopians isnât OP with their current bonuses (100f 100g, faster attacking archers and free Pikeman).
That is true. They have a small house bonus and a free llama. The house bonus is decent because houses take up less space in closed maps, and you donât housed as easily. The llama bonus is worthless. Give them a good eco bonus and theyâll get their time in the spotlight.
That really depends. If you are playing against a cav civ player that didnât even pick up fletching, urumis are a fine raiding unit. urumi/militia combo is also solid after late caste/early imp. All of this is under the assumption that your opponent doesnât just go archers because youâll lose 100% in that case.
This is worthless. I would take the +1 attack of a champion over +5 HP of the two handed swordsman every single day. Especially since dravidians already get that upgrade for 50% the price.
Trick is getting Champion strength Two-Handed Swordman without researching 100s 375f 175g upgrade. It is similar to Bulgarians Two-Handed Swordman but stronger due to Wootz Steel Tech. On the other hand, Entire Champion-line needs rework but it isnât subject of this topic now.
The only reason I disagree with you is that dravidians lack knights. Bulgarians have excellent cavalry, especially with their stirrups tech.
The way I see it, dravidians seems to be a bit like goths. That seems to be the only path available right now. They need to be a civ you finish off in castle age because your chance of winning goes down by a lot once they hit mid-imperial.
So, I am strongly in favour of giving them extra strong militia line, given they donât even get knights.
A far better option would be to give them viable cavalry and make them a bit more well rounded.
What? It costs 65 food and yet has 0 p.armor. Its not OP, its not balanced, just terribly weak. And why would melee unit have to fight urumis in isolation. Even a bunch of skirms would clean those out. Its such a useless unit. High dps is pointless if the unit is as fragile as they currently are. This is why Ghulam and Obuchs with just 8 attack are considered broken while shotels with 2x more attack or teutonic knights with higher hp and 7 melee armor are almost never used. Atleast 2 of the 3 among speed, hp, p.armor should be solid to justify that cost and the unit should have a purpose in the civâs tech tree. Right now urumis have none of those. @GentleEvening5 is just proposing a buff to 2 of those 3 stats which would make them barely usable and justify preferring urumis over champion.
Just stop sensationalizing useless units like this. The only civ that might have a problem against urumis is Goths.
ITS NOT. In imperial age discount on halbs is strong but not discount on getting the halberdier upgrade tech which is a one time thing. The tech discount is actually more useful in earlier ages even though the savings are smaller.
And 20% faster halbs isnât OP, Lithuanians exist as living proof of it. Thatâs a civilization with insanely strong cavalry,
uu and a diverse tech tree. Unlike Leitis, Ignore armor is an imperial age Unique tech that costs 1200 resources. And all it does is give nearly the same bonus that Burmese get for free. +5 attack against cavalry is only a tiny addition to the 37 net damage they do. Bohemian and Japanese ones will still be significantly better.
Basically the proposed bonuses come after UT and are barely a toned down combination of existing bonuses. With the farm bonus that helps have extra wood and cheaper barrack techs I believe it might just be sufficient enough for Dravidians to push with infantry and arbs before imp upgrades come in for the opponentâŚ
Well go and tell that to Viper who believes Urumi is rather underrated than underpowered, and I think you arenât even looking of a real picture on how broken are going to be with almost same HP as TKs in melee, that in conjunction with splash damage, charge attack and UT for ignoring armor.
BTW Donât you realize the Urumi now at least fill the concept of a glass-cannon high attack infantry UU that Shotel Warrior canât do?
I think you are losing quite credibility here, how you compare a civ that lacks both blast furnace and plate mail armor and whose UT only offsets the PA to a civ that can tech quickly into halb, get an UT that makes them ignore armor but then doubled squires?? You say that comes very late sure, but what you can do once you have all of that and seeing then how fast skirms die to halbs?? Dravidian halbs can kill villagers and arbalests in 4 hits instead of 5 (same as burmese) but thatâs it.
Just pointing out that 20% extra speed on halbs doesnât make them outrun any cavalry units that theyâre supposed to counter and isnât game breaking. There was a point where they had blast furnace and the extra speed on halbs. Still they were fine. The part which people complained about was their potentially 22 attack Paladin and not halbs.
You are speaking from the hypothetical 1 hr point where the game is completely even or Dravidians are far ahead. How will a civ with no cavalry nor monk techs ever get to that point? Like how are they going to stay even with other civs with such a big tech tree handicap? Or to put it in other words, by the time Dravidians get a castle, both the UTs, a ton of halbs and something like say Arbalesters or hand canoneers with all the upgrades, what military did the other civ player do?
Bonuses in castle age the most important part of the game are only for infantry techs, which are niche and nearly unusable with the current state of infantry, skirmishers which is not an aggressive unit and elephant archers which are slow and ineffective for their cost.
And? Halbs killing arbalesters faster or killing skirmishers in lesser numbers is true for many civs like Slavs, Japanese and Burmese like youâve mentioned and those are not strong land civs at all. In fact theyâre below average. Personally Iâd prefer a very strong eco buff or some moderate eco buff like the one @GentleEvening5 proposed and some form of ranged unit buff to Dravidians instead of the 2x effect on infantry. But the 2x effect on infantry is by no means broken, and that too certainly not for halbs. I can atleast see why if someone is concerned about their champion.
He never gave any context as to what heâs basing the rankings on, like a map or setting or just taking a fight once these units are made like a CBA scenario. And he also mentions in the end of the video how he might play some ranked games the next day try them out and change his mind. So, a couple of months later he might try going urumis a few times and put them below. Heraâs 1v1 arabia tierlist had pre-nerf 50% bonus damage Gurjaras at B tier, pre-buff Bengalis at A tier and after 2 nerfs Gurjaras is now in S tier while Bengalis is in C tier in the most recent one, he made.
Anyways heâs never going to pick Dravidians on any land map in any tournament and even if he does in some map with shore fish, heâs not going to go Urumis. Mr.Yo, Hera, Mbl, Nicov all of them have tried to play skirms or crossbows into urumis in multiple ranked games and have lost them all, sometimes even from a winning situation.
I donât know what the âglass canonâ is but if youâre referring to a high attack but fragile infantry unit, thatâs just as awful by design as the current Elephant archers are for their costs. Urumis are fine for late game if they cost 65 food and 5 gold or for mid game if they cost 35 food, 25 gold. But 65 food, 20 gold for these stats??? Not at all.
Ya exactly. Something like start with 2 huntable animal that stays under the tc or just the 1 lama but all economic buildings except farms support +5 population. Or just farms support +5 population.
But they are probably going to do. The dravidian player is probably going to do man-at-arms into archers or man-at-arms into skirms. And except for a few like Bulgarians, the cav civ player is most probably going to do a range and get fletching at least if not bodkin.
Thatâs the purpose of halbs - counter cavalry. Against other units, you have to use something else. 3 or 4 extra attack and that speed isnât going to be as worthy as you hype it. Thatâs why I mentioned how Burmese or Japanese arenât an insane or OP civ but rather weak on land maps inspite of having default civ bonus on halberdiers.
You could nerf their charge attack, splash radius or splash effect % or a mix of these. Its still a favorable trade overall to get more hp by sacrificing some dps. This way they wonât be as âdeadlyâ against melee units as you feel they would be while being more useful.
From saying its a worse bonus, you have mentioned it will snowball out of control.
You donât put out any scenario to discuss. You are making blanket statements full of high decibel words.
When @Pulikesi25 gave a question, you answer is Viper said so. Donât be that guy. Donât take things personally. Take sometime to think.
Viper did not win with Dravidians in his first match and several followup matches he uploaded to youtube. He said the meta with Dravidians is farms into scouts. He is the authority according to you. Viperâs biggest strength is coming back from behind. But in a final BO7, He lost playing Dravidians vs Lierry in Grand melee without a second strategy. If you are Dravidians, you fall behind. You are dead. For a civ completely missing out on the strongest unit category in the game (Heavy cavalry), other units have to be better than everything else the opponent has. Yet they get a stub for a monk tech tree and bonuses which work only till feudal age. With the current design, there is no versatility in the civ and zero options for a come back. Looking at the playrate, the civ is definitely a failure for AOE2 franchise.
This is why you never have urumis by themselves. I made that mistake far too many times before learning how to use them. And that is to mix them with the militia line and the spear line. Kinda like how you mix huskarls with those two as well. The mix ratio will depend on your opponentâs composition.
That helps in multiple ways. Firstly, it increases the durability of the force, as the militia line can tank more. It is also cheaper in terms of food. Secondly, urumi-halb combination is super good (especially with wootz steel) as that initial hit will reduce the HP of your opponentâs units by a lot and then the halb/champion can finish it off easily. You can test it out for yourself, see how much more damage you do with a champion/urumi comp than a pure champion group, and see how much more durable an urumi-champion group is compared to a pure urumi group.
All this sounds great, but there is a huge catch. A mixed group is going to be SLOW. You will be sacrificing one of the advantages of the urumi by mixing them up. This is why I think @GentleEvening5 's double barrack bonus is a pretty neat idea. Make the rest of the infantry a bit faster to stay on par with urumis. I donât know about the rest of the barrack techs, but getting double squares is pretty good imo.
I have mostly just seen knights and mangonels, at least in the early castle age. Oh, and monks. But you are right, it is not uncommon for them to pick up fletching pretty early on, especially when they add skirms. I would hesitate going full archers against dravidians, the same as going full infantry. Because drav players either have archers already, or skirms. Then they can add in 2-3 ele archers. If 25 crossbows are going against 15 crossbows and 3 dravidian ele archers, the second group will win every single time.
People had this concern from the time the DLC was announced. âOMG Wootz STEEL? URUMIS OP? DRAVIDIANS NO 1 BROKEN CIV WHICH WILL DESTORY EVERYTHINGâ.
Dravidians are a bottom 5 arabia civ. Yes, thatâs a powerful upgrade, but you need to put it in the context of the civ. Dravidians have an exceptionally weak castle age, and this isnât going to completely change that dynamic.
Yeah, we can agree. Urumis are already exceptional at melee, they donât need a buff there. They do need something else, though.
Huskarls offer something there â shielding ranged unit fire. They take up some ranged unit fire and still donât die, the ranged units continue to attack the huskarls while the champion or halberdiers keep fighting their counter units. Whereas urumi, champs and halbs all die to ranged units. You donât need to mix urumis there. You could but you donât âneedâ to, it doesnât offer much value. Instead of having 50 Dravidian champions and 30 halbs you can have 30 champions, 25 urumis and 25 halbs but its practically the same army value against common melee-ranged military compositions. Whereas 50 goth champions and 30 halbs is considerably weaker than 30 champions, 25 huskarls and 25 halbs in those situations.
Why would you need such a combo unless someone is paying you to win with urumis as part of your army. If youâre up against some high dps infantry you can use your own ranged units or if youâre up against a tanky infantry like eagle ghulam or huskarl you can use champion and if youâre up against heavy cavalry, you can go halbs, if you want to raid and snipe siege, you can use light cav. All of those units are cheaper alternatives and much easier to get to. Youâre delaying yourself to get some army which offers very little value over other options.
Units like Kamayuks have 2 extra p.armor, range and 20 more hp than a halberdier and hence offer some value over halbs but urumis have the same p.armor, just 5 more hp and still cost 20 gold. Neither cost nor pop effective.
ya exactly. There was a particular thread discussing the civ tech trees before the release where this happened. A lot of people saw the Gurjara tech tree and mentioned they were weak and hyped up Bengalis and Dravidians as the p2w civs. And its not even that powerful, its basically a mix of Garland wars and chieftains for a civ that doesnât have a strong eco like Vikings or Aztecs.
